Social dominance and sales personality

Abstract

41 salesmen and 34 saleswomen took the Bernreuter personality inventory. The nine best sellers of each sex were then selected by the store personnel manager. 8 men and 7 women were selected as the least successful sellers. The inventories of these groups were scored for social dominance. Sales-people score high in social dominance, and the best sellers tend to score higher than the poorest. Low correlations were secured, however, between social dominance scores and sales success. Other scorings of the inventory failed to differentiate these two groups any better. Then the records were analyzed, and certain items were selected which did differentiate between the groups. The other 42 original subjects' records were studied for these items: the correlation between sales success and score on these items was .60 for men and .36 for women. The author argues for breaking away from the established categories of personality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)